Alice and Averick had become girlfriend and boyfriend for a week now, causing general discontent in the young female population of Gunsee, many of which were in some way infatuated with the boy, and a small party in ‘Wood’s Solutions’ organized by Herman, who’d congratulated her on finally getting someone to fuck her moodiness out of her. She’d thrown a defective vial of some explosive liquid at him for that, which had exploded… into a gooey orange mess. So that was why he told her to never touch the defective stuff!
Anyways, after an attempt on her life by an angry ex and the strangest mini party of her life, Alice went back to living her normal life, now with the added bonus of having someone to kiss when she felt like it. And what kisses too.
Sadly they couldn’t do much more: Alice had a patient, and she didn’t feel like going a step further when someone a room over could very probably overhear them.
And regarding said patient.
“Hello Armando.”
Alice walked into what had once been her room holding a bowl of food and a bowl of water, something clinking in her pocket with a sound of glass on metal.
Armando sat up slightly on her bed and nodded gratefully: “Hello Alice. Thank you for bringing me food.”
She chuckled: “It wouldn’t do for me to save you from arsenic poisoning and then let you die of hunger now would it?”
“Still, thank you. And the food is surprisingly good.”
“Did you doubt for even a single moment that I wouldn’t be able to whip up something good?”
“In my experience people who’re good at healing also have lost the ability to taste anything and tend to cook shitty food.”
“Well, I can do both! Then again, food is easier than potions and the like: at least the herbs you throw into it don’t tend to explode if you throw them wrong.”
She placed the plate of soup on his lap and sat down on a nearby chair, placing the bowl of water on the night stand beside her bed, close to the glass of water.
“That’s the strangest way I’ve heard someone put it,” said Armando as he took a sip of soup and smiled.
He then glanced at the bowl, raising an eyebrow: “That’s an unusual way to fill up my glass of water.”
She smiled, nodding: “Indeed. This is just… a means to ensure my safety. Eat, I’ll explain later.”
And that was when Armando felt his heart skip a beat, although he wasn’t quite certain if it was from fear or his heart actually skipping a beat. These days it was difficult to tell.
Still, he ate, because no matter what was to come, taking it on with an empty stomach wasn’t that good an idea.
The soup was hearty and tasty, with small bits of meat mixed in with steamed vegetables of some sort. All in all, filling, and tasty, and easy on his stomach. He was confident he could now keep down more complex foods than liquids, but Alice wasn’t so sure for now, so that’s what he got.
Finally, he placed his plate down on the bedside table, beside the other bowl, making sure not to bump it, as his hand, still trembling even after a week, clasped the glass of water nearby and brought it to his mouth.
“Thank you for the meal,” he said, bowing his head slightly, “But now I’d like to know what that other bowl is for, if you don’t mind. You sounded serious.”
The girl smiled, taking the plate and placing it on the floor as she moved closer, her hands going for the nightstand and moving it between them, the bowl now at its dead center.
“This is called an Assassin’s Bowl,” she started, her tone solemn.
Armando raised an eyebrow: “It looks like the bowl you gave me breakfast in.”
She nodded, again, very solemnly: “That is because this is the very same bowl. Per se, it’s not the bowl that’s important. I could’ve used any one of those I have in my cupboard. What matters is this,” she put a hand in the pocket that had been clinking with her every step when she’d entered and took out… a small vial connected to a chain, a mysterious red liquid inside.
“It took me a week to get this prepared, and thank the gods we have Skills because otherwise this could’ve taken a month.”
Armando looked at the vial, squinting slightly, his vision blurry at the edges, but still couldn’t understand what he was seeing.
“What is it?” he asked.
“This, my dear friend, is fermented blood. Your fermented blood, to be precise. Or, if I wanted to make this sound even creepier, it’s blood wine. Nifty, right?”
Armando stared disbelievingly at her, a small smile beginning to appearing on his face, only to freeze in place and disappear when he saw her smile and understood that she was not, in fact, joking.
“Before you ask, I used your blood. The local [Winemaker] said he had a Skill to get the poison out of it so I didn’t have to give him a pint of my own blood.”
He frowned, a deep sense of unreality slowly beginning to dawn on him: “Why would a [Winemaker] just accept to make wine out of someone’s blood? How fucked up are the people living in this city?”
“Oh, they’re plenty normal, he just liked the idea of the challenge once I explained how I had sourced the blood and why it would be used. Apparently he gained two Levels thanks to this. He nearly convinced me not to pay as well!”
And at that Armando calmed down a bit: in this world pretty much anything could be explained with the excuse ‘It’s going to give me/you Levels’. It was an addiction, a subtle one that every single living, thinking, being developed. One that had long since taken a hold of Alice and Liam. Not Isse, though. She had other things to worry about.
“So he just… made wine using my blood. This feels deeply unsettling.”
Alice shrugged: “You haven’t seen the half of unsettling things I know how to do. Anyways, I’m going to use this now to see if anyone’s going to come looking to murder you. If they are, then I’m going to have to ask you to kindly leave this house as soon as possible because I’ve only recently started actually liking my life and would rather keep it, agreed?”
He didn’t like this idea, at all. But then again, she was right. He was just an uninvited guest (technically invited, but you get the meaning) who’d appeared in her life and she’d decided to save out of the kindness of her heart (the Levels were just an extra, he hoped). Him putting her in danger wouldn’t be exactly a good way to repay her kindness. And while the chains were no longer there, sometimes he still felt a presence in the background of his thoughts, a feeling like seeing someone out of the corner of your eye only to turn around and find nothing there. She was looking at him (he was pretty certain it was a She), judging. She had little hold over this place, for Alice was the only one who knew of Her and Her stories, but for some things that was more than enough. Especially in a world where a story could reshape reality, with the right words in the right moment.
“Alright, I agree to these terms,” he said, bowing his head slightly and wincing at a sudden sharp pain in his neck.
Alice nodded and, slowly, unstoppered the vial of blood-wine, handing it to him: “Go ahead and spit inside it.”
Armando raised an eyebrow but did as he was said, handing back the vial when he was done.
“What’s the spit for, that thing’s already made with my blood, isn’t that enough of a connection? I’m sorry, but I’m not really an expert when it comes to this [Witch] stuff.”
Alice shook her head: “Don’t worry, I won’t kill you for asking explanations on stuff that shouldn’t make any sense. But, truth be told, I myself don’t know the exact answer: I know how to make wine, or alcohol… but not rubbing alcohol apparently; anyways, I know how to make it, but I never really understood the process behind it, so my best guess is that something is lost when you turn the blood into wine, and that something should be supplemented with spit.”
As she spoke she stoppered the vial up again, letting it dangle from her hand over the bowl of water as she activated her new favorite Skill: [Talisman: Enhance Power].
She wasn’t always certain if what she was creating was effectively a Talisma, but every time she used her Skill the effects of whatever she was making became much more pronounced, so it was probably alright.
Luckily for her, that was mainly caused by a simple reason: the multiverse, for that was probably the best way to define it, was filled to the brim with traditions and ideas that were so similar to each other yet so different: so, maybe, in a world the assassin’s bowl was considered a rite, while in another it worked as a talisman, and so it was for many things that regarded the world of the occult. For that reason the System was… confused. Yes, confused was the right word. It had been taught by being shown everything that was and much of what could be, and seeing such diversity It just couldn’t differentiate one tradition from another. So it was that most of them fell upon multiple tags as
A case of literary theft: this tale is not rightfully on Amazon; if you see it, report the violation.
Really, the girl was extremely lucky.
Or whatever existed since Luck was dead here.
“So, what’s supposed to happen?” asked Armando.
“It’s quite simple: traditionally blood represents life, while wine is a symbol of decay. No, not decadence, but decay, since it’s made by making grapes ferment. The fusion of both concepts allows to symbolically represent death, or a desire for it. The spit is the anchor, to let the bowl know whose death we’re trying to see. As for the bowl and water themselves, they’re a symbolic representation of the world, with the former being made of clay, signifying earth, and the latter representing the sea.”
She smiled, as if remembering something, before speaking up again: “What was it that grandma always said? Ah, right: Across the waves and deep in the thrumming heat of this forsaken land, I ask of thee: where shall the knife come, that my back be not turned to thy’s face?”
As she spoke the vial bound to the chain began moving slightly, oscillating, as if Alice were moving it around, but her grip was firm, her arm unmoving, her gaze unflinchingly staring at every movement of the glass container.
And then, just as suddenly as it had started, it stopped, the bottom of the vial pointing straight down. Alice sighed and smiled.
“What does this mean?” asked Armando, his hands slightly sweaty.
“It means that nobody’s trying to kill you. Or that the planet itself is, but that’s never happened before so… you’re gonna be fine. Whoever tried to kill you probably thinks you’re dead.”
Armando chuckled: “Probably the best news I’ve heard this week after realizing I wasn’t dead.”
Silence fell on the room as they just sat there and thought, relaxing and thinking of nothing at all.
Until Alice spoke again: “You’re going to try again, am I right?”
Armando stood still a few moments before he nodded: “You said it yourself: I don’t have much left to live. Years at most, right?”
She shrugged: “Eh, I don’t know. I said years, could be decades: I don’t know what Skills you’ll get, nor do I know how much a person’s Levels influence their bodies, since an [Alchemist] friend of mine once said that high Levels bring advantages other than better Skills. But yes, if things stay as they are, you’ve probably got three years left to live, maybe even less.”
Armando nodded: “Thank you for being direct about it. I don’t know many people out there who could say something so bleak without batting an eye.”
Again, Alice shrugged: “Death is Death Armando. It’s inevitable, no matter how hard you try. I should know,” she chuckled mirthlessly.
He looked at her, then away. Clearly this girl had been through something, and just as clearly he didn’t want to hear about it.
“Anyways, yes. I’ll try again, if only just to avenge my colleagues and friends.”
And at that Alice snorted derisively: “To avenge them? That’s stupid. You don’t go on suicide missions to avenge people. Be honest with yourself: you’re doing this for yourself, or for pettiness, or for the greater good of the world, even though I’ve yet to find someone out there who’s actually ever done something for that final reason.”
Armando looked at her and raised an eyebrow: “Where do you come from that you’d be so disillusioned, so jaded?”
Alice opened her mouth to answer, to tell him the usual bullshit answer about her coming from a faraway place that was much worse than this one.
And then she stopped, realization dawning on her. She’d said it herself: this world was much better than Earth. The people were kinder, bound together by common strife, many of them uncaring of the politics of kingdoms and [Kings] and nations. They looked out for each other most of the time, and did it just because they knew that, sooner or later, they’d need that same help. The human side was still there, with the selfishness and desire for power and riches and all that, but it was tempered down, reduced.
So she answered: “You know, you’re right? I’m… I’m quite the grim person, once you dig deep enough. The place I come from, it isn’t kind. This place though? It’s a lot kinder. So… I’m sorry. Maybe you can actually do this for revenge and kindness.”
She looked up, at the ceiling, and nodded: “What was your original plan?”
Armando’s eyes opened wide: “You want to help?”
“Maybe. Depends. I won’t go right into the College’s territory, but if there’s something I could feasibly help you with I’ll try. So explain.”
For a moment, the room was silent, then Armando nodded, determination in his eyes, and he began to explain.
“The House of Memories is alive, which I think you’d already guessed, since only living things can be killed. She… has a heart. And a mind. To kill Her, both must die.”
For a moment Alice wanted to interrupt him, ask if it wouldn’t be enough to just destroy one of the two. Then she realized that this was a fantasy world and he was talking about killing a living building that had probably been around since the dawn of time if the stories about the College were to be believed.
“The Heart is hidden in the depths of the House, in the basement, while the Mind exists inside the Dream. Ah, right, you don’t know what those are, let me explain. The -”
She raised a hand and stopped him, chewing thoughtfully on her lip as she decided whether or not tell him that she was a [Dreamer]. It felt like such a coincidence that he would need a one to complete his mission and that she was. Everything about this felt like such a big series of coincidences. It felt like too much even for a Wanderer’s Rose.
In the end, though, she decided there was no damage to be done in telling him. Not like he was going to hurt her.
“I’m a [Dreamer], Armando. I know perfectly well what you’re talking about.”
He gaped up at her, disbelievingly, only to then start chuckling deep in his chest, before he began to laugh painfully, coughing mixed in with the probably joyful sound.
When he calmed down he just said: “This is just perfect.”
“Yes, I know. Maybe even too perfect.”
“What do you mean?”
“...It’s nothing. Just a strange feeling I sometimes get that there’s… more to all this.”
[■■■ ■■■■]. The world contorted and distorted, and then all was back to how it should be.
He frowned at her, before nodding: “Well, I won’t be looking a gift horse in the mouth.
“Anyways, the plan was simple per se: we had to find a way to enter the basement, the place where… the things live, find the Heart and kill it. That was the most complex part: the other, much simpler, one was to find the place inside the House’s projection in the Land of Dreams where we could unleash a poison that would then spread everywhere.
“As you can well imagine, it is no easy task. We had a [Poisoner] working with us, the one whose poison was used to attempt to kill me, and she was trying to figure out something that could be used for this second part of the plan together with a [Dreamer]. She’s dead now, and the [Dreamer] is probably lost somewhere in the Land. The rest of us were trying to figure out a way through the monsters in the basement. One of us, an old [Librarian], thought she had found some clues, a way to do it, but she died.”
He looked at the wall in front of him, his voice slowly going down to a whisper as, for the first time since he’d woken up, he was forced to confront the reality of his situation: he was alone. They were all gone. Dead or disappeared into nothingness. And he had no real clue on how to begin this project anew now that years of work had gone down the drain.
“You say your [Poisoner] friend was trying to figure out a poison that could work on a being’s mind. Heh, that would explain why she chose arsenic. Assured nerve damage, the brain is made of nerves, so she thought it would work. A normal person’s answer to a Dream problem.”
She hummed in appreciation: “Slow acting though. Too slow for what you want. Your little House would have to suffer for years before Her death, following the rules of the Dream. Sure, it would’ve killed it, but it wouldn’t exactly be a humane death.”
“Her.”
“What?”
“The House is not an It. The House is alive and is a Her. A woman, a female, I don’t really know, it’s just the way the Elemental referred to Her.”
“Elemental?”
“Oh, right: there’s an Elemental of Memories living in the House as a sort of… keeper? I’m not really sure, he never explained it to anyone. Said there was no reason for us to know seeing how we were treating the House. Right now he doesn’t matter.”
Alice shook her head: “It’s the House of Memories and he’s an Elemental of Memories, I’m pretty sure it fucking matters my dude. I don’t know how, but I’m certain it matters. Now, in regards to the poison problem, I can help.”
She was a [Dream Poisoner] after all.
For a moment, again, she felt that strange sensation at the back of her mind, as if this was too much of a coincidence, but just as fast as it had appeared it was gone, like a flickering lightbulb’s light in a dark room.
“How?”
“I know poisons. Studied them all my life. And I understand how the Dream works. I could probably make something useful, and I know someone who could help me find your friend. But not now. For now, you will rest. The House can wait a week more.”
And that said, she took the bowl, put the vial of blood wine in her pocket, nodded goodbye to Armando and left the room.
That night, he heard Its voice for the first time in years.
[Memoir Shaper Class Removed!]
[Memoir Shaper Skills Removed!]
[Confectionery Architect Class Reinstated!]
[Confectionery Architect Level 25!]
[Confectionery Architect Level 34!]
[Conditions Met: Reshape House -> Sweets Bending]
[Skill - Sweets Bending Obtained!]
[Skill - Creations: Wondrous Aura Obtained!]
[...
It kept going changing some of his Skills, giving him new ones, but then it added something else:
[Avenger Class Obtained!]
[Avenger Level 2!]
[Skill - Perceive Potential Allies Obtained!]
[Vow of Restlessness Taken!]
[Vow Skill - My Last Breath Waited a Minute More Obtained!]